How to "find time" i.e. GET MORE DONE on social media in 10 steps a day
Social media sucks…
time. It sucks time…….
……….
If you let it.
Have you ever heard of Parkinson’s law? It’s the idea that something - a task - expands to fill the space you allow it. You’ll observe this if you’ve ever cleaned out a drawer, cabinet, or room to create beautiful negative space for your shit to breathe, and a year later it’s filled with crap again. Yet there are people who manage to live in tiny homes and 400 square foot apartments. But where do they put their crock pot, air fryer, vegetable juicer, kitchenaid mixer, and soda stream (all of these, by the way, live in a giant, deep cabinet in my kitchen, only reachable by standing on a chair).
The answer is that they just don’t own them - because they don’t have the space. They adapt their life to do without those things, or get them somewhere else if they want them.
Time is no different. When I wrote my first album, and for every single I’ve released since then, I’d sit down for 30 minutes a day. Sometimes I’d have to force myself, or move that time around when my baby was sleeping, or when I wasn’t teaching lessons or gigging, but the time was blocked. The. F. Off in my head.
So every day, I’d do something to move my needle toward completing that song that would build toward the larger collection. Some days I’d write a chart, harmonize a melody, send a stem off to a producer, arrange an instrument line, record a vocal line, or track an instrument (not all of these things…just 1 or 2). Other days, I’d work on the publishing and royalty end, and submit it to playlists to drive streams. Sometimes I’d literally just sit and think about my song, which is just as productive. I’d do this while going for a walk, cooking, or showering, but the pressure was off to try to do both as long as I had the time blocked off.
This is how needles move. NOT necessarily on a ten-day retreat into the woods (although, I’ve done that, too as a resident artist, and it’s awesome, but rare). NOT necessarily by waiting for someone to pay you for the task (also cool if that could happen…), and NOT by giving it a whole day in your schedule and ignoring the process on the other days.
If you sit down to “do” social media, you might be chasing a list of tasks you don’t even know exist. You know you need to do it, because talking about what you do is so, so, so crucial to serving your mission, and others need to know about it. But then you fall into that rabbit hole, followed by that can of worms, and it all gets overwhelming, fast. So you spend hours “making a social media post”, and end up with kind of nothing and a lot more questions. Blech. As an overachiever, I hate that feeling.
I am millennial child born of capitalism, and I hate unproductivity as much as I hate blue cheese
I’ve been using a game-changing framework I stole from Rachel Pedersen, an amazing social media marketer who somehow manages to distill all those cans of worms into bite sized nuggets that make social media super achievable and scalable. In her book Unfiltered, she suggests a 10-slot daily schedule for social media marketers divided into 3 dailies, 3 priorities, 3 client tasks, and 1 revenue-generating thing.
This has given me a lot of clarity on how to structure my own work with my multiple nonprofit and creative clients, without feeling overwhelmed, or working 10 hours a day on all the things I could, but that aren’t priorities or don’t actually move those organizations forward in their missions (or for my own business!)
You’re busy doing work that matters. Social media will take up the time you allow it. If you’re not clear on what you’re doing when you log onto your socials, here’s how you can apply this process and get in the flow of creating content - without waiting for a 5-hour block of time to appear, because lezzbehonest…it never will.
Let’s go.
List of 3 daily tasks for social media content creation
Plan a post for a few days from now - just ideate.
Write down what you want to say, and imagine the format it will best live - is it a reel? Static graphic made in Canva? Carousel or swipeable post? A simple photo? What will it need visually? Decide, and write a list, so you can start working on that in a few days.
Create a post for 3 days from now - visuals only.
This could be the actual trench work of creating a graphic, sourcing a photo, finding a logo, font, or colors, etc.
Caption and hashtag tomorrow’s post.
Find any handles of people or entities you want to tag, and decide on your hashtags. Keep it all on a spreadsheet.
List of 3 daily priorities for content creation & social media engagement
Post today’s post. It’s ready to go if you’ve done steps 1-3 for 3 days.
Share the thing you just posted to your story.
Look at your follower stories and engage with them - comment, like, or re-share
List of 3 daily engagement tasks for social media
Respond to comments & DMs
Follow 5 people in your target audience
Leave a thoughtful, genuine comment on 5 posts (from your followers or accounts you’re following)
1 revenue generating task for social media - add this to your list
“Selling” yourself on socials, without feeling icky, can look as simple as this:
Musicians - share your patreon, album or single link
Podcasters - share your latest episode or e-mail subscriber / newsletter signup
501c3 organizations - sharing your fundraiser or donate page
Artists - sharing an art piece for sale and how to purchase it
Photographers, freelance creatives, et. al - share your package rates and how to book
This where it gets a teensy bit hairy, because where will this last step lead? Probably to a new post or idea for one. Where do you stop, then?
When the timer runs out.
To start this workflow, generate a list of 4 social media post ideas. Your first idea will be what you post in 4 days. That’s all you need to get started - 4 ideas. Start at the top of the workflow. When your timer goes off, stop. Next time, pick up where you left off in the workflow, or start the process over again from the top.
Along the way, focus on what you need to put in place for the revenue-generating post to work. Get your website up, make sure your donate button works, get a functioning venmo ready, and have your inquiry / lead form prepped (or whatever your social post will eventually point to).
See how this framework has a great feedback, snowball effect?
It’s worked for me, and I know it can work for you.
Remember, the process above will only take as much time as you allow it. If you have 10 minutes a day to do this, your content creation may not look curated and gorgeous because you only have, like 1 minute to create a Canva visual (but - surprise - that’s why they have literally thousands of pre-designed templates you can plug and play, duh).
But if you have 30 minutes a day, you could get a lot done and each task can sort of expand into the spaces that don’t take as long. The framework is flexible and forgiving.
So how do you “find time” for social media and learn how to pick up where you left off? It starts with this process, where you can still be creative and see results on your social feeds.
Grab this ten-step process in a google doc so you can save and refer to it later. It ain’t a pretty, curated PDF, but it’s useful AF and I created it in the time I had.
…which is so meta, my mind is shaking.
Cheers!
-Robin Anderson
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